A tape-reel feeder has been used to supply electronic components to be mounted on a print substrate. The tape-reel feeder is a device that forms dimples on a tape made of synthetic resin or paper at intervals of 1 to 2 mm, houses electronic components in the dimples, and supplies the electronic components to a mounting device (mounter). However, the tape-reel feeder has problems in that its size becomes large due to bulkiness of the tape, and the tape become a waste product after its usage.
To address this problem, a bulk feeder has been developed that uses no tape. In the bulk feeder, electronic components are thrown in a hopper, introduced in a conveyance path having a tunnel shape from a lower portion of the hopper, aligned in line, and conveyed and supplied to a mounter by an air flow. The electronic components that have reached a take-out port provided at a conveyance path end are sucked by a pickup nozzle of the mounter to be sequentially taken out. For example, Patent Literature 1 describes a bulk feeder that sends rectangular chips randomly housed in a cassette into a tunnel and conveys the chips by vacuum suction from an end side (downstream side) of the tunnel.
A solder ball is used to electrically connect an electronic component such as a ball grid array (BGA) semiconductor package and a printed circuit board. To align solder balls, an array board has been conventionally used in which a number of holes each for housing one solder ball are arranged. For example, solder balls can be aligned by dropping a number of solder balls on the array board and rubbing on the array board with a squeegee made of a rubber to make solder balls enter the holes and remove the redundant solder balls.
In doing so, in the conventional method using the array board, a solder ball can be nipped between the squeegee and an edge of the hole, causing chipping or cracking. In this case, electrical conduction properties are disadvantageously changed due to reduction of the volume of the solder ball. To address this problem, too, solder balls may be supplied one by one using a bulk feeder or the like.